Little Day Trips: El Rompido

One Sunday a few weeks ago a friend of mine who grew up in Huelva suggested that we get out of the city for a few hours. He said he was going to surprise me with where we were going. We ended up driving through El Portil, a small beach town that gets really crowded in the summer. A lot of Spanish families (including Miguel’s) have two apartments or houses—one inland in whatever town they work and one in some beach town for the summer. The effect is that these towns are very empty and quiet in the winter and crowded and lively in the summer.

We continued on a beautiful scenic road that runs along the coast to an even smaller beach town called El Rompido. We stopped here, checked out the lighthouse, walked through town, wandered onto a dock and had a café at a little bar that was on the beach. There is a string of small restaurant/bars along the quiet beach. A lot of the chairs and tables are actually on the sand, which I thought was pretty cool. 

I really liked El Rompido. It was quiet and quaint. Miguel said before it became a more popular beach getaway, the town was only fishermen. People still live in the old fishermen-style houses; they are small, simple one story houses all attached in a seamless row. The beach is very calm because the waves are blocked by a narrow strip of land called La Flecha that comes off of the mainland and curls back around some distance out, stretching along across the length of the coast around El Rompido. La Flecha is really pretty and I was told it is a great place to hang out and camp, as the small beaches are more secluded. The beach of El Rompido is littered with little fishermen’s boats turned over, as they are not in use.  As we sat having our café con leche, some little kids lumbered up over, stood atop and slid down the sides of one of these boats playing some imaginary game—extremely peaceful. I think out of the ones that I have visited El Rompido is my favorite little town around Huelva.